The director of a major hospital conducts a study to discover the types of critical incidents that have occurred in the the hospital over the past 5 years. She compiles a list of all the critical incidents that occurred during that time. In this study, critical incidents serve as .A. The list is the dependent variable. B. The list represents the hospital director's assumptions. C. The list is an extraneous variable. D. The list represents the sample. E. If the two hospitals have been in operation only five years, the list represents the population.